From the fall of Marvel vs. Capcom, to the rise of Super Smash Bros. and Street Fighter V, Evo shifts into the modern esports era!

Following Daigo Umehara’s back-to-back victories in Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV in 2009 and 2010, Capcom made the pivotal releases of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in 2011, ushering in what would become a new 7-year era for the Versus Series — that would sadly end with 2017’s Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite being excluded from this year’s main lineup of titles.

In the meantime however, another force was slowing rising up, Super Smash Bros. Melee, which made a triumphant return to the Evo main stage in 2013 after raising a whopping $94,683 for breast cancer research, ending a five-year streak of absence. Notably, they trumped Lab Zero’s Skullgirls, which to this day has yet to taste main stage glory. However, as noted by James Chen, Maximilian, Liquid|Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez, and Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar, they first had to combat Nintendo’s attempts to shut down that portion of the event.

However, the Smash community would not be denied, as Evo 2015 and 2016 played host to the four biggest Smash tournaments of all-time between Melee and Wii U. In more recent times, we’ve had the controversy of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle being added to this year’s lineup months before release, to the massive 5,065 player debut of Street Fighter V in 2016, to last Sunday’s Dragon Ball FighterZ Grand Finals between Echo Fox|Sonic Fox and Cyclops Osaka’s GO1 being the most watched set in the history of Evo. There is also the rise in developer support, with new characters, entire games, and tournament circuits being announced in Las Vegas, not to mention the expansion into the East with the debut of Evo Japan.

The video closes with a rundown of all past and current Battle by the Bay and Evolution Championship Series Champions. You can enjoy the entire video below.